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Wednesday, June 7, 2006

HONEY PIE YOU'RE NOT SAFE HERE

My day's can be extraoridnarily long sometimes. Everyday, I'm woken up, reluctantly because my bed is awfully comfortable, by a cat named Bella who lives up to her name. She jumps on the bed, usually her belled collar gives me some warning, and positions herself on my chest purring as loudly as she can. She bites my nose. Licks my nose. Butts her head agains my face, smack smack smack, purr purr purr... if I dont respond, she grabs my bracelet and attempts to move my hand in a petting motion. She's a smart cat, and it will only be a matter of time before she is trained to pee in the toilet. This all happens at around 8am... approximately 4 hours after I have finally gotten to sleep.

Yesterday I had a meeting in the morning and headed over to the office where I managed to have a couple more breif meetings before heading over to a mid-town studio to watch Young Love perform infront of a bunch of people that work for Island/DefJam. This was technically the first time they played infront of people, but tomorrow will be their first show. Much to my joy, my friend Jeffery's little brother was playing Keys for Mr. Keyes, and was flawless! I was actually insanely surprised that their live performance held up to their album tracks as much as they did. A song like "Discotech," which is basically like a Justin Timberlake song mashed with a Bloc Party song, sounded more agressive live than on CD and "Too Young To Fight It," managed to be sexier live than on CD, which is pretty awesome since the song is a reggeatone song...

After the showcase, some people headed to some restuarant/bar a few blocks away and had some drinks. More drinks. Tons of drinks on the label (not stolen transmission... we only do free Fanta). A few peach vodka soda's later and I was in a cab heading downtown to meet up with my mom at the Lion's Den to see my cousin Maurice's band, A Seperate Peace, perform. Please go to the linked myspace page to get an idea of how fucking hilarious it is that my mom, in all 61 years of glory, attended this show. When we walked in, there was basically nobody, so my mom and I did the supportive thing and walked to nearly the front of the room and stood against the wall. As soon as the band begun the room filled up with about 30 or 40 kids who then began moshing and circle pit dancing around, basically, just barely, missing my mom. At one point, some dude got so stoked out of his face that he did a kung fu style kick dance about 3 feet from my mom and at that point, i grabbed my grinning mommy and pulled her towards the back and into safety. She's never seen a band like this, or an audience like this, and all she could do is turn to me, grinning from ear to ear and say "They're dancing like magnooons!" Which in arabic means "they're dancing like crazy people." She was right, or I was old. I can't figure out which.

I don't mean to sound like i'm showing favoritism, because I'm not. I give my family members a harder time than anyone i know because that's how my family is... but my cousin is probably one of the best frontmen I've seen in ages. He's like the hardcore reincarnation of Gerard Way. So completely natural and at ease on stage with no inhibitions. The kind of music he plays is not my thing, I would have no idea what to do with it, or what, so i could never sign it... but fuck, if someone smart doesn't. My only critique is that he's such an amazing singer with a strangely melodic voice (even when he was 3 he could sing songs pitch perfect, and not in a 3 year-old kind of way), i'd like to hear him "sing" some more. But then again, that's cause i'm not a hardcore type of girl.

I went home and was greeted by Casey from Dallas who came over the day before after driving Brandon's band's van up from Austin, Nick from Hull/Resivior, and his frien Dan from High Times. We then went to Joey Night's house in Brooklyn, which i'd never been to... but there was supposed to be some bbq, and I had to pick up Permanent Me demos, so it seemed like a good idea. I got there and was basically falling asleep so the party pooper in me decided to go home after an hour and a half. Wah waaaah.

At about 1am, I was finally passed out in bed. Blissfully sleeping. snore snore.

I woke up with the urge to listen to Muse, in a semi-failed attempt to get Brandon into the band, and proceeded to play Origin of Symmetry, probably their best album to date, and, in my opinion, the album that all those emorbid bands are based on. He la-ti-da'd in falsetto as we left for the day... but i'm not sure if he dug it as much as I do, or any member of Thrice.

Check out "Citizen Erased" from the album... I used to listen to this song on repeat with my friend Chris Kelly when we'd go out every single sunday to the movies in Ridgefeild. We'd drive around freaking out over how genius the album was and how we couldn't understand why no American labels were trying to steal them from Maverick (who may have dropped them at that point, I forget). Now Chris is studying to be a Brain Surgeon and coincedently taught one of my oldest best friends, Sydney Rose, biology at Columbia Presbyterian. He was... 22 at the time, maybe 21? The kid is a fucking genius. He also used to itern for my partner Rob Stevenson way back when he was 15 or 16, and when he was 17, he interned for Lyor Cohen (who ran I/DJ at the time)... he'd get calls from Lyor Cohen on his cell asking him to set up meetings. When he turned 18, Chris decided that he wanted to better humanity and quit the music buisness to go to med school. If Chris doesn't discover the cure to some disease that plauges humanity, then I don't know who will. Seriously, if people should be cloned, they should start and end with Chris Kelly.

Speaking of genius, I found this quote painfully hilarious:"I know many Christians who are rational thinkers that I adore to pieces, but not THAT many. I'm not anti-religion. I'm anti-imbecile. Let out a massive sigh of relief because I won't talk too much about politics on these posts, mainly because I feel that it ultimately and unfortunately doesn't matter how the music community or its bands feel about it. Music can't fix it. It starts with the rich, old white men with grey hair that inherited our government whom are completely senile at this point. It starts with the absurdity of the concept of an electoral college, which enabled Bush to win in his first run. Alas, if The Beatles and Bob Dylan couldn't bring peace to the world through their music, then no band ever will. Well maybe the grey-haired guy from American Idol, but that's about it."

LET'S GO SOUL PATROL!

Tonight I'm headed to some "Entourage" party with JennyPenny. If i can stand. I hope I can stand. snore snore snore.

About Me

Sarah Lewitinn (born February 3, 1980), also known by her nickname Ultragrrrl, is a music critic, DJ, and blogger. She gained notoriety as an assistant editor at SPIN Magazine.
In 2006, New York magazine named Lewitinn as one of "The Most Influential People in Music", citing that "she has more power than any print music critic".